One of the first questions I get asked when I tell people about the Race is, “What are you going to for college?” My response is almost always, “I have no clue.”
College is a big deal for anyone even someone who is taking a gap year, but for me I get a different feeling about it. Many of my friends are getting ready to go to the college of their choice and while they are picking out roommates and checking what classes they want etc. I am on the other hand fundraising and growing my relationship with God. It is the weirdest feeling to see the people I have grown and learned with get ready to leave.
I am one of those people who needs to have everything planned out, not minute by minute but sometimes it gets close to that! When I thought about college I knew that I wanted to be closer to home so coming back would be easy but I also wanted all the freedoms college gives you. Conflicting choices right? When the World Race became a reality I had no clue what I was going to do. I prayed and I thought that going to my local college was the right choice for me, after 9 months of not being home choosing to be near was the right answer for me. Although I wasn’t listening to the little voice in my head asking me if there was something greater then the college just 30 minutes away.
When I applied I was positive the mailman would bring me my acceptance letter in the next couple of weeks, then I got home before a fundraising event and found a letter telling me I did not make it in. I was crushed, my comfortable and close to home plan was shattered. What was I going to do after the race? I have to go to college right? What if I’m just not smart enough to get in? All those questions hunted me for weeks after my denial to the one school I applied for.
As I struggled with the stress of not knowing what to do I kept hearing that I needed to let it go (yes, I know you are probably silently singing the song from Frozen). To let go of something so huge in my life was shocking. I laughed at what God wanted me to do telling Him there was no way I could just give it up like that, but as my friends talked about college and even the college I thought I wanted to go to the feeling of being drawn there started to fade. My feelings towards the Race became so much more powerful as college started drifting away from my mind.
I was putting college and my future in front of everything else when God was trying to tell me that I needed to let that go to see that for right now my future was the Race. Everything else, college etc, could wait because I cannot control Gods plan for my life. Its HIS plan not my own.
So no I have absolutely no idea what I am doing about college or what the plan is for when I get back, but I have peace with this because I know that Gods planning is so much greater then anything I could come up with.
